Questions and Answers

Though this blog has become an archive of my musings for 24 years, it’s time to move my writing to a new location on the ever expanding internet. For many years I have been writing periodic pieces about GertrudeandAlice for scene4.com, an online arts site with an international readership. They have now asked me to write a monthly column because of the wide interest in my articles. I’m very excited to do so!

Here is the first one, https://www.scene4.com/0526/hansgallas0526.html posted today, one day after Alice’s 149th birthday. As she shuffles to her 150th, I’ll be joining her and Gertrude with more and more monthly musings including specific ones in 2027 with Alice at the forefront.

Thanks to all of my blog readers and join me now at scene4.com.

Belated 149th Alice, seen here circa 1963.

February is Gertrude’s birthday month and a few weeks before her 52nd birthday in 1926, something happened that would change her and her image forever.https://scene4.com/0226/hansgallas0226.html

90 Years Ago , October 24^th

In  Monique Truong’s  classic novel, The Book of Salt, one of GertrudeandAlice’ s cooks recounts his time at rue de Fleurs meshed with his own complex life story. In the opening pages he tells about their departure for the U.S. after thirty years in October of 1934. 

With bags packed and clearly labeled, take a look at my commemoration of this monumental journey from coast-to-coast to coast at scene4.com.

https://www.scene4.com/1024/hansgallas1024.html

I met Fritz Peters as a boy in chapter twelve of his 1964 memoir Boyhood with Gurdjieff, about his stay at the boarding school/institute outside of Paris run by the philosopher-mystic George Gurdjieff. In that chapter he tells about the visits that he and his brother Tom had with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1920s Paris. Those visits prompted me to write my picture book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom.

Now more than 100 years after his birth, five of his major books are back in print published by Hirsch Giovanni Publishing. See the 100^th birthday tribute I posted in 2013 https://gertrudeandalice.com/blog/2013/03/02/fritz-peters-at-100-a-tribute-by-any-other-name/

The books including Boyhood with Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff Remembered, Finestère, The Descent, and The World Next Door are reissued in playful, jellybean colored paperback editions. A screenplay is being written for Finestère and audio editions of Finestère and Boyhood with Gurdjieff have been produced. Plus, a documentary of his life is in the works.

Boyhood with Gurdjieff , the first of the two memoirs, offers a story-filled  account of his stay with Gurdjieff where he was not only Boy Friday, but also Boy-the-Rest-of-the-Week, as well as being groomed as the mystic’s successor.  The remaining three novels draw heavily on mental health issues many prompted by Fritz’s military experiences and his life as a closeted gay man.

As this year’s Pride Month ends, the rediscovery and re-appreciation of this incredible writer are something to be truly proud of.  Pick up one of his new editions.

One day after Alice’s 147th birthday, here is a piece I wrote for the online art magazine scene4.com about her estranged brother, Clarence. This article has some additional facts I’ve discovered since the one I posted here several years ago.

https://www.scene4.com/0524/hansgallas0524.html

And here they are! Why? See the previous post or go to the February 2024 issue, Scene4.com.

https://www.scene4.com/0224/hansgallas0224.html

Let the celebration begin!

As this year comes to a close and the year-end holidays are here, I send to you my GertrudeandAlice holiday card.

Wishing you only the best of everything in the new year with good health at the top of the list.

And now a smile or two: “Holiday Schlepping with Gertrude and Alice.”